I should have learned by now. Always read the fine print. Never trust a salesmen. I did skip through this forum to check how moving to ND6.5.1 was working for people. Since their wasn’t a rash of people complaining about any specific errors, I thought it was probably safe to move from ND6.0.3 and injoy the “Instant Messaging” integrated into the newer release. After looking through configuration documents and administration help files I eventually turned to this forum to find the key to starting this wonderful new IM feature. What I found was, the locator is not included in the Domino ND6.5.1 server. In order to utalize IM you still need to purchase “Sametime”. Doh!!!
I feel this piece of information was intentionally left gray. Judging by the number of people that where duped. One person in the forum left a link to a licenseing promotion that supposedly offerd 20 users access, and no server license for internal users. Misteriously, the link is broken and that particular page can no longer be found. Hmmmmm?
Subject: Duped by Lotus Marketing - Instant Messaging???
Although I do not agree that the information was intentionally misleading, I do feel that this point should have been made a little more clear–especially for small and medium businesses where an additional cost means a lot. Let’s face it, a simple disclaimer would have been sufficient. “Instant messaging requires the SameTime component…”
I think Sametime is licensed by user, not by server, as said by Alan Lepofsky and Ed Brill . This leads me to believe that the IM integration in ND6.5.1 truly is free for internal use. Did I miss something?
Subject: Duped by Lotus Marketing - Instant Messaging???
Instant messaging doesn’t require that the Sametime client component be installed. It does require that you have a Sametime server in your environment that users can connect to (how else did you think it would work?)
Lotus has been pretty clear that the Notes 6.5.1 license comes with a limited instant messaging license that allows your users to connect to a Sametime server and use the IM capabilities integrated into the Notes client without additional licensing costs.
You do not need ST6.5.1 for the IM integration to work with the 6.5.x client. You do need ST 6.5.1 if you want to install it on a Domino 6.5.1 server, but there is nothing stoping you from pointing to say a ST3.x server for the IM functionality.
I had ST3.1 running on the same box as Domino 6.x. I upgraded that to Domino 6.5 and ST still worked. I upgraded it to Domino 6.5.1 and ST still worked. So, the new entitlement gives you IM without need of additional licenses – or hardware.
Subject: RE: Duped by Lotus Marketing - Instant Messaging???
Nathan,
Hmmm - I normally agree with your posts, but to answer your question “how else did you think it would work?” - he thought the ST server was built in to the 651 Domino server in the same way as the ST client is built into the 651 Notes client. A lot of people thought that, judging from the reactions.
To answer another part of the original question, the version of ST in the 651 Notes client will work successfully with an ST3.0 server (for example) BUT there are some differences. If the ST server is not in the same Notes domain as the client, the awareness in the Notes 651 ST client fails but the “old” ST Connect client works fine. I’m not sure why that is.